On a recent fishing trip with a group of politically conservative friends, we found ourselves lamenting the societal insanity that has evolved around the covid-19 virus. The question was, how long will this massive over-reaction to a low-octane viral illness continue? Half of the group admitted to continuing to wear their masks when going into stores, simply to avoid being hassled. This struck me as rather sheep-like behavior. Most citizens are used to listening to, and following the advice of their local officials, a natural pattern of behavior which helps maintain the general order of society. This virus, which due to its occult origin, originally appeared potentially disastrous, is in reality, very pedestrian in its lethality. It has however, succeeded in bringing out the inner tyrant in many state and local officials. The demand that masks be worn, despite the fact that they are little more than a talisman against an invisible boogey man, has created a degree of compliance in the population unlike anything since the legitimate threats of polio or the Spanish flu.
It is a universal truth that tyrants never cede their power willingly. For most of us, ‘sic semper tyrannis’ is not a good solution if one wishes to continue the course of one’s life. One might rob the tyrant of his, but it’s likely to be accomplished at the cost of one’s own life or liberty. Simple civil disobedience has been shown to be effective when many participate, but it too is often injurious to one’s liberty.
Many years ago, I worked for one of the giant American corporations that inhaled management philosophies like hits from a bong. In the mind of upper management, each new inhalation was sure to provide magic visions to cure all the ills of the business. I took to calling it ‘panacea du jour’. One hot philosophy in the early 1980s was called ‘leadership by example’. In practice, it consisted of putting hard hats on the managers and making them pretend to be workers. Someone exhaled, and the vision was gone. But the core concept will work for us in our present circumstance.
When you go into a store or other enclosed area that demands you wear a mask, do not. Simply go in, go about your business not as if you were dancing naked in public, rather you are treating the mask-less condition as entirely normal (as it should be). Be courteous, be pleasant and smile. I even sing along to whatever background music is being played in the background. You will get a lot of ugly looks from the karens around you. But when they glower, smile back. You will notice something that you may not have anticipated. Some of the masked individuals will look at you with obvious jealousy. For those few who also choose to not wear a mask, give them a wink and thumbs up. You have now assumed the mantle of leadership. Will you be in trouble? Nope. You have a trump card, HIPAA. The tyrants of the 1990s planted the seeds of their own destruction by making it illegal to demand details of your medical condition. On the off chance of a real confrontation, you have two magic words, ‘medical exemption’. A medical exemption means that you don’t have to wear a mask. The nature of your medical condition cannot be demanded by local authorities. HIPAA is over-riding federal law. States may in fact add to HIPAA law provisions, but cannot subtract from it in a way that forces you to reveal information.
If you choose a leadership position as outlined here, there are no absolute guarantees of personal safety from rogue tyrants or the fists of the ultra-aggrieved. But the tiny tyrants’ taste of dictatorial powers has intoxicated them and they will not swear off its sweet succor without our help.
I have done exactly that (wearing my bare face), and got the full range of responses described.
From secret smiles and laughing-out-loud to an aggressive Arab woman in a grocery store who yelled at me: “If my 4-y.o. can wear the mask, so can you!” (to which I replied: you’re ruining your daughter’s immune system’ adaptability. It’s child abuse.)
This endless lockdown so gets on people’s nerves, it completely demolished the great American custom of Not Getting Into Somebody Else’s Business. Now, it seems, publicly criticising someone for their free choice became a vent to voice one’s frustration, a politically-sanctioned and approved vent.
ROTFLMFAO. Today’s numbers: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
You might notice America is at the top, leading as always. The numbers are low as it’s early in the day. The new infections rate will come in at around 40,000 as you are in unbridled pandemic mode. The deaths too will be quite a bit higher than the number there.
The problem is that you seem to have, is a poor understanding of, and certainly respect for, for physics. That’s most of what is happening to you. Its not a myth or a left wing plot, its a real viral pandemic. Its also very infective indeed with the ability to produce new viral particles in very large numbers almost right away, before symptoms even develop.
If you want to go on as usual, many people will die from this virus.
Here in Connecticut, the King/Governor made it illegal to claim a medical exemption without a printed physician note. No one must be allowed to rebel. But in less controlled environments like stores or offices, 90% of people go without masks and take them off as quickly as they can. Like Prohibition, bars are now run out of self store lockers, people meet at the end of dirt roads for a river front picnic and others.
But we in CT got to low COVID cases by having one of the highest COVID rates and deaths in the country. Our leaders claim their efforts did this without thinking what they really said. Letting the disease run its course got us to the low case rate we have today.
Dear PenGuy,
Do see that? It’s the irony light shinning brightly.
I happen to have both an undergraduate degree in physics, and a PhD in biophysics. I also did biomedical research for 25 years. So that physics part? Yeah, I got that.
It depends on what state you are in. In CA it is the law – by edict (the same guvner who signed an executive order banning sale of gas cars in 2035).
There are some people really adamant about them. I went into a convenience store yesterday – told the clerk I forgot my mask – she said “no problem”.
It is funny how the line is drawn and how people react. I like the ones driving in a car – alone – with a !@#$ mask on.
I told someone that I felt like an old plow horse with a feed bag on – and she laughed saying “at least they should put some candy inside!”
But in retrospect this enforced isolation was a bad policy. So was putting infected people into nursing homes.
I was at an outdoor farmer’s market a few weeks ago – it was pretty crowded, even so, and being in a yuppy puppy part of town, masks and social distancing were being observed, although most people in the outdoor part of the market were pretty casual about obeying the “face covering required part. I did spot one iconoclast – a very nicely dressed woman who was wearing a spangled and diaphanous belly-dancer’s veil over her mouth and nose.
It fulfilled the letter of the law. Her nose and mouth were covered.
I gave her a big thumbs up.
Excess death numbers suggest the true toll is 300K. Is that a lot? I don’t know, it depends what you are measuring it against. We have always regarded a new cause that kills 300,000 of us in 6 months to be a big deal before, but it is admittedly less than 1 in 1000. You can call that a small number if you want.
But what alarms me is you discerning the motives of other people, that they can’t possibly have any good reasons for wanting people to wear masks, they must only be once again waiting their chance to make other people do things. The fiends! Because you know their secret hearts. And those who wear the masks – why, they must be sheeplike! They couldn’t possibly have any good reasons for that, it must only be a defect of character, which you and your fishing buddies are gladly free of. So you have a Motive-O-Meter that you invented and are using on the rest of us? Where can we get one for ourselves? It would come in handy.
I think it just seemed natural to you to look at the behavior of others and contemplate what they must be up to. It does get that way, if you do it long enough. It doesn’t make it accurate, it’s all just confirmation bias stuff. Please submit evidence that the government officials have no real desire to save lives or prevent the spread, or on the other side, evidence that they are cackling with glee and toasting each other in private when they can make us do stuff. That ill motives are a possible explanation is not evidence that they are the actual explanation just because you don’t like them.
It has been a tactic of the left for years to pretend to read motives when they are just making it up, and possibly projecting, and I have been harsh about that. I therefore don’t like it any better when conservatives do it, and I’ll rail against them too. It is true that strong-minded, freedom-loving people don’t like being told what to do. You know who else doesn’t like it? Teenage boys. We can’t tell from the outside which it is in others – including you – so we shouldn’t make it up as if we do. I don’t know if you and your fishing buddies are courageous souls or teenage boys, so I don’t pretend I do. Stop acting like a liberal, dammit. Your reading of people’s motives keeps leaking out into your rational analysis, invalidating it.
As for the use of masks, I continue my policy of skin-in-the-game. Hospital officials, who have skin in the game, advocate wearing masks, and extend that to the general population in a lot of circumstances, likely because they’d like to see fewer people coming into ERs to infect them. Okay, maybe not. Maybe they just like to have their chance to finally tell everyone else what to do. A Masters in Public Health does involve a lot of training in giving people orders what to do, maybe that’s why they took the degree in addition to their other credentials. Could be. But I don’t actually have evidence for their motives.
While one can find research on either side, the Infection Control department at my hospital cites published evidence that masks provide minor but measurable protection for the recipients, because in real-life situations such as coughing, sneezing, laughing, talking loudly (and other things I’ll bet happens in every other state), they provide some barrier. More importantly, they provide moderate but cumulative effects on the delivery of the virus when spread over a population. It has nowhere near the value of distancing and reducing indoor exposure, but masks have some value.
The Collected Wisdom of Guys Talking Shit on Fishing Trips. You should write an article. I’m sure it would clear peer-review.
Several links to studies of mask effectiveness are provided at the bottom of this CDC page:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/cloth-face-cover-guidance.html
There have been some recent suggestions that C19 may be transmitted via aerosols, which are so small and light that they can travel further through the air and remain suspended for longer periods of time. CDC recently released some guidelines based on this conclusion but then quickly withdrew them:
https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-09-21/cdc-says-new-guidance-on-risk-of-coronavirus-aerosols-was-posted-by-mistake
All of the studies I’ve seen on mask effectivness conclude that the main benefit is protecting *other people* from possible infection by the mask wearer, with benefits in the other direction being much smaller. Yet CDC director Redfield, talking about the usefulness of masks in an environment where we have a vaccine, said: ““I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against Covid than when I take a Covid vaccine.”
Note the language: ‘protect ME’. That would seem to completely contradict the studies from Redfield’s own agency about the direction of benefit.
“I happen to have both an undergraduate degree in physics, and a PhD in biophysics. I also did biomedical research for 25 years. So that physics part?”
So what happened to you? I have had several friends who suffered from both mental and physical problems, and they became very different over the decades. I hesitate to suggest that conservatism may be a problem to that degree, but that’s what it looks like. ;)
You lot appear to be ignorant as well. Face masks catch about 80% of the outflow of viral particles. They keep out about 20% of the inflow out, although that’s a less certain number, as there are so many variables. The actual degree of disease you catch, is pretty well proportional to the amount of viral load you take on. So is you can do anything to lessen that, like wearing a mask, you will not become as sick.
The Chinese long ago gave us information about aerosol transmission and although its rare, is quite possible. The virus is extremely contagious. It can multiply very shortly after infecting a person, and the massive outflow of viral particles from people who have not yet shown symptoms, is driving this thing.
Random fact you should know: the virus can survive for days, at quite high temperatures on stainless steel.
If masks actually worked they would not be giving the OK to bandanna’s, poorly made and fitted homemade cloth ones, people with beards, masks pulled down below the nose, etc- it is a joke- reminds me a lot of the recycling BS, it is a feel good measure “look we are doing something” bunch of crap. Virtue signaling en mass. Or compliance conditioning.
The ironic thing is that ALL the actually effective masks, have unfiltered exit valves.
It would be an interesting experiment to have Trump insist on nationwide masking, to see how fast the left would reverse course.
It fulfilled the letter of the law. Her nose and mouth were covered.
I’ve been tempted to wear a robin style mask. All Florida law says is “face covering”. I don’t think it says anything about nose and mouth… LOLZ.
Thankfully, FL governor Santos has overridden all the local liberal nannies, and rejected fining anyone, which takes the teeth out of the ordinances… Businesses can still demand them of customers, but you can at least force them to say something about it, then try the medical exemption claim.
}}} But what alarms me is you discerning the motives of other people, that they can’t possibly have any good reasons for wanting people to wear masks, they must only be once again waiting their chance to make other people do things. The fiends! Because you know their secret hearts.
Oh, come on, AVI. Liberals are very much tin pot tyrants at heart. They couch it all in flowery concern but there are a host of other things that are at least as deadly that they don’t say a word about or against or make a fraction of the effort to even support, much less encourage.
Eight Days With Harry Truman
https://www.americanheritage.com/eight-days-harry-truman#2
That was in the 40s to the 70s. Almost ALL liberals are Truman’s “professional liberals” these days. That’s what these damned riots are all about. They’re all massively pissed that they were denied power in 2016 after being repeatedly told it was “in the bag”. And now they’re trying their damnedest to make everyone scared of their intentions if Trump wins again.
Well, except… {cough!}Bullshit{cough!}
Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings—Personal Protective and Environmental Measures
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article
Money quote (the latter half of the Abstract — emphasis mine)
Although mechanistic studies support the potential effect of hand hygiene or face masks, evidence from 14 randomized controlled trials of these measures did not support a substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza. We similarly found limited evidence on the effectiveness of improved hygiene and environmental cleaning. We identified several major knowledge gaps requiring further research, most fundamentally an improved characterization of the modes of person-to-person transmission.
Granted, this is “influenza” and not CV, but, until you get at least one or two randomly controlled CV trials of the types of masks worn by the public, under the same lack of training, and the same lack of sanitization (i.e., wearing the same mask for days on end with no effort to sanitize it)… I’m going with the 14 influenza studies as to their effectiveness.
Suck on it, Pengun. As usual, you’re wrong. I’d almost think you were a sock puppet considering how constantly you take the blatantly most wrong position possible…
AVI: “Excess death numbers suggest the true toll is 300K.”
Would you care to expand on that? The real issue with the resistance to mask-wearing is that the authorities have lost all credibility — at least with the thinking part of the population.
For context on that 300K, based on prior year’s death tolls about 1,900K people would have been expected to die “normally” in the US in the 8 months or so that the Covid Panic has been around. Then there is the government agency pronouncement that only about 6% of the deaths ascribed to Covid are strictly due to the virus alone — most of the deaths involve pre-existing conditions. Is the true toll really about 18K ? And then there is significant evidence that other Covid-free people are dying from the Lock Downs — delayed treatment for cancer, cardiac conditions, etc. How do we separate those avoidable deaths caused by the Lock Downs from the true toll due solely to the virus?
The Covid Panic began with videos from China showing relatively young well-dressed men collapsing on the street — definitely very worrying. But scenes like that have never appeared again — not in China, not anywhere else in the world. The Panic was stoked by the English modelers who claimed that 2,000K extra people were going to die in the US. That did not happen. And the Great God Fauci has changed his mind repeatedly on advice about controlling the spread of the virus.
Is it any wonder that intelligent people are increasingly skeptical about Covid and the measures supposedly undertaken to control it? The real question is what do the authorities have to do to win back the trust of the people they serve?
I guess the question is whether you’re even pretending to want to try to convince people you’re anything but an a-hole? Because that is all you’re going to accomplish. The ones who need to do non-compliance are businesses who are still ordered to close, and churches, and similar groups and activities, and we as individuals need to support them. Schools should be open completely, and all sports should be happening (I live in NY where our psychopath of a governor is an extreme case of wannabe tyrant.)
Putting on a mask while in a group is not some huge sacrifice. (As for doubts about whether they work, I’ll defer to the fact that Asians have been wearing them for decades now for respiratory disease control.) Now mandates to wear one outside, while doing sports, etc., are another story, of course. And it’s a terrible tragedy that this is happening in a modern election year, since we’re hopelessly divided as a society.
I’m wearing a mask just because I don’t want to deal with the bullshit. Dane County here in Madison is as authortiarian/leftist as it gets and people are crazed about the whole thing so my options are these:
1) wear a mask and receive zero looks/hassle
2) don’t wear a mask and receive hassle
I chose option one.
As far as mask effectiveness, that part is a 100% joke. I have seen them worn improperly, moms helping their kids with them, people constantly fidgeting/adjusting them, and the list goes on and on. Hey, if the stores stay open and everyone calms down just a bit because of the theater, I’m in. It is like flying. Does anyone think that the kabuki theater that is the TSA is actually making anyone safer? Well, it is either that or no flights. I choose the theater.
Wow, you have outdone your usual level of clueless ignorance and parroty bloviation.
Take your own “worldometer” reference. Sort on “deaths per 1m pop”, and you see we’re actually 10th.
This despite the fact that we had a bunch of Dem imbeciles almost deliberately exposing the prime victim group — the elderly — to the virus in the first month, thereby ensuring the death count in the USA would be artificially inflated.
Then there’s the simple fact that we have been inflating our counts by paying for hospitals to claim almost any comorbidity to be CV. No, not claiming all such are invalid — but it seems perfectly reasonable to suggest that 10% of them are specious, which would lower us to 14th… 20% drops us to 17th.
Then there’s the idiotic refusal by the government to use HCQ, which almost certainly works — look at your death-ranked list. Notice anywhere in central Africa that is high, even though they have very poor healthcare system? No? Yeah, they take HCQ as antimalarial prophylaxis regularly. Trump spoke in favor of it, so many must die as a result, rather than allow him to be demonstrated correct.
Warren, over at Coyoteblog, has written two excellent pieces lately on this overall subject:
Why The Incentives Are Stacked to Overreact to COVID
http://coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2020/09/why-the-incentives-are-stacked-to-overreact-to-covid.html
The one thing Warren fails to note in that piece is the vast array of helicopter parents averse to any semblance of risk to their precious babies. The fact that their teens are far far more likely to commit suicide from the isolation imposed by Covid than to die of covid is lost on them.
His other piece is also excellent, and well-thought out:
The COVID Rorschach Test and the Split in Thinking That Divides America (the Sweden tribe vs. the Whitmer tribe)
http://coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2020/09/the-covid-rorschach-test-and-the-split-in-thinking-that-divides-america-the-sweden-tribe-vs-the-whitmer-tribe.html
Just defining them as the Sweden clan and the Whitmer clan is itself an interesting point of view. It’s two different approaches to the problem, and frankly, the Whitmer clan are just abject fools (My interpretation, not Warren’s — he’s just laying it all out).
Money quote:
And I’m sure you are one of the WC, Pengun. In every sense of WC.
The Economist has a project to track excess deaths vs reported C19 deaths in a whole lot of countries.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/07/15/tracking-covid-19-excess-deaths-across-countries?utm_campaign=coronavirus-special-edition&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=salesforce-marketing-cloud&utm_term=2020-07-18&utm_content=cover_text_url_3
About due for another update.
Nobody knows how much protection masks provide. Some officials use mask edicts to bully the public. Some members of the public enthusiastically assist the official busybodies. There’s a lot of mask theater.
Nevertheless, let’s say you want to protect vulnerable family members. Might it not be prudent to wear a mask when you’re near other people, to reduce your risk of becoming infected, and to wear a mask at home to reduce the risk you will infect your vulnerable family members? Skin in the game applies in this situation too.
I see people trying to argue with PenGun again. He posts to describe his superiority to Americans. You don’t try to convince anyone of anything by calling them “ignorant” especially after making ignorant statements about masks and viruses.
I wore masks in surgery for at least 50 years. They were to reduce bacteria in exhaled air, particularly in air directed downward into the wound. No expectation of blocking viruses was present. Viruses don’t cause wound infections.
One reason Asians, especially Chinese, have worn masks in public is the appalling oral practices common in China such as coughing to clear “throat devils” and spitting on the floor or pavement.
“One reason Asians, especially Chinese, have worn masks in public ”
My impression is that since SARS it is Japanese and Koreans that have greatly increased their mask use, not Chinese. I know that tourists to Hawaii from those countries started to wear masks quite frequently beginning in the early 2000s.
It seems obvious that masks must decrease the particulates/”stuff” you inhale and exhale–how could they not, at least somewhat? But it also seems obvious–and I am nothing like an expert–that this doesn’t actually correspond to clear evidence for suppression of transmission in a community. It seems like a precautionary principle approach would have said start wearing masks back in February, based on looking at non-Chinese Asian responses, and as with so much else, it is horrifying that we are acting now as if we have learned nothing in the last 7 months. Mostly because the CDC seems to be nearly as useless as the WHO, and because our political structure is horribly dysfunctional–the Dems have gone full anti-vaxxer for goodness sakes!
“The Collected Wisdom of Guys Talking Shit on Fishing Trips. You should write an article. I’m sure it would clear peer-review.”
Well, that is certainly a great contribution to civil discourse.
On the subject of peer review, how much of the COVID19 strategies are being driven by public health credentialed “experts” and what weight is given to the advice of economics and social specialists? The most influential groups, including the media, are united in a goal of next to zero infection rates. That economic and social cost is orders of magnitude greater than the excess deaths we are having compared to the Swedish methodology.
I do not discount the long term social, political and economic costs that strategies of universal protection versus targeted protection have wrought. What peer reviewed journal referees on that basis?
Death6
Physics is hard, I guess. It looks like you will make a half million dead as time goes by, as you are determined to minimize the reality of this pandemic.
Hi ho. (Kurt Vonnegut’s reaction to the destruction of Dresden).
“The most influential groups, including the media, are united in a goal of next to zero infection rates.”
Nah, they’re united in the goal of defeating Donald Trump. All else is secondary. They’ll become pragmatists if they can drag Biden into office. If not, they’ll continue to destroy whatever they have to to try to damage Trump.
My state has a mask order in place. Twice I’ve been in the store while people w/o masks walked in, refused a request to put a mask on (a new one provided by the store), and yelled at the store workers.
I felt sorry for the workers. They’ve been told what to do by their bosses so going in maskless puts them in a tough spot. Unlike government-paid teachers, those grocery store workers had to go to work else they’d lose pay or be fired. We should cut them some slack and instead concentrate on changing the idiotic state mandates.
“Nobody knows how much protection masks provide”
Actually, someone does. Namely, Association of American Physicians and Surgeons:
https://aapsonline.org/mask-facts/
The preponderance of scientific evidence supports that aerosols play a critical role in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Years of dose response studies indicate that if anything gets through, you will become infected.
Thus, any respiratory protection respirator or mask must provide a high level of filtration and fit to be highly effective in preventing the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. (Works for Mycobacterium tuberculosis (3μm)
Public health authorities define a significant exposure to COVID-19 as face-to-face contact within 6 feet with a patient with symptomatic COVID-19 that is sustained for at least a few minutes (and some say more than 10 minutes or even 30 minutes).
The chance of catching COVID-19 from a passing interaction in a public space is therefore minimal.
Tatanya, I don’t disagree with that. N95 masks are your thing.
I am in agreement with Dan from Madison. This isn’t the hill I want to die on. I wear a mask when appropriate and studiously avoid noticing what anybody else is doing. Since I have very little faith in them, I don’t care either.
We’ve had air spread epidemics since forever. Why are they having to to figure this out on the fly? There isn’t a thing that’s really novel about this. I would be really surprised if anything that worked with the common flu as far as preventing spread didn’t work with wuflu. If masks really work, why haven’t we been wearing them every winter? How many people have died needlessly from the flu in the last 50-100 years?
Then there are the masks themselves. There are two ways a filter can work. The first is with a controlled pore size, where the pore size is smaller than the particles to be excluded. The other is by entrapping the particles in the interstices formed by a fiber mat. These will also have a pore size but it is generally many times the size of most of the particles entrapped. While the first type is capable, in theory, of blocking 100% of the particles above a given size and in practice should be in the high 90% range, the second type has a rating that is somewhat probabilistic where the effectiveness varies by the size but some portion of anything less than the pore size will escape. Also notice I said particles. You can’t filter droplets, you can absorb them, or depending on the surface potentials, may adsorb them on a surface but only until the media becomes saturated. Then the accumulated fluid will either drip or become entrained in any air stream. In all cases stopping the actual viruses with anything you can breath through without mechanical assistance is like trying to stop gnats with a chain link fence. Also, if you get the surface potentials wrong what you have is a nebulizer, capable of converting large droplets that would quickly fall to the ground into aerosols that can hang in the air indefinitely or be sucked deep into the lungs. Most synthetic fibers and coatings fall towards the wrong end of the surface potential spectrum, there’s a reason for mostly cotton underwear.
Knit versus woven is important. Anything with stretch should be avoided simply because it will. I suppose something the weight of a heavy sweater might work but that’s not what people are using. If it’s not a little uncomfortable, it’s probably not doing any good.
Then there’s the near certainty that an effective mask will concentrate and hold any virus that becomes entrapped from either side until it either dies or is flushed away, just from the mechanism of evaporation.
My personal opinion is that masks don’t make a difference. If you’re susceptible and sufficiently exposed, you’ll get it with or without a mask. I think it’s plausible that masks, especially as they are actually being used, could be counter productive. When you look at the rates in Texas, the big hump seems to coincide with the statewide mask mandate.
If there had only been something like a government agency that had the responsibility of conducting research into how to control disease epidemics so we’d have an idea what was really effective when one occurred.
“Well, that is certainly a great contribution to civil discourse.”
No, any semblance of civil discourse was dead long before AVI chimed in.
What he brought was an adult perspective (sorely needed), and a well-deserved beat-down (which, anybody who can let go of their feel-bads long enough to comprehend his point will surely find it to their profit).
Interesting how all the mask proponents totally ignore an actual review of studies published by the CDC which concludes that mask effectiveness for influenza (granted, again, not exactly CV, but pretty relevant) is not supported.
The closest thing to a legit argument anyone made was to cite a boilerplate page by the APA which, if you know anything about how such things are made, may well not represent anything resembling research, but instead reflect the (admittedly, professional) opinions of a small but vocal minority of the body itself. Seem to recall that fact even having been brought up in Chicagoboyz some years ago in reference to another such position statement put forth by another group (I may be misremembering).
I’m put in mind of an instance some decades ago where a (then new) personal computer was to be selected by a working group to be provided to each of Florida’s county agents. I worked for one of the members of said group. They never met. Somehow, a decision was made anyway. Which reflected the personal position of one single member of the group, who happened to be a huge fan of DEC minicomputers. The boat anchor selected was basically a half million (mid-80s dollars) boondoggle, as it was incompatible with virtually all the software out there at the time… but hey, it COULD run DEC minicomputer software!! Sometimes, anyway.
The key point remains:
Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings—Personal Protective and Environmental Measures
https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article
Money quote (the latter half of the Abstract — emphasis mine)
Although mechanistic studies support the potential effect of hand hygiene or face masks, evidence from 14 randomized controlled trials of these measures did not support a substantial effect on transmission of laboratory-confirmed influenza. We similarly found limited evidence on the effectiveness of improved hygiene and environmental cleaning. We identified several major knowledge gaps requiring further research, most fundamentally an improved characterization of the modes of person-to-person transmission.
This isn’t some yahoos, it’s the CDC. I have less faith in the CDC than I did a year ago, but they are still a serious source.
This isn’t some “collective opinion” by an “august body of experts”, it’s a review of 14 actual trials.
And it’s the thing to actually address, if you’re serious about the topic, give a damn about science and disagree with the idea that masks don’t work.
Seems to me your best argument would be to explain how CV was somehow notably and significantly different from influenza with regards to transmission.
Mike K, my thing, as I sad at the beginning of the thread, is no masks at all. The link supplied proves decisively that the only type of mask having any protective value is N95, and it is not what we are told to wear.
But now, as de Blaise announced his new storm troopers gangs will be patrolling the city and FINE people for not virtue-signaling with useless piece of cloth muzzling their faces, all my arguments become academic.
“Nobody knows how much protection masks provide. Some officials use mask edicts to bully the public. Some members of the public enthusiastically assist the official busybodies. There’s a lot of mask theater.
I agree with all of this.
I wear a mask when I’m out shopping (about the only activity I can engage in these days). It’s “mandated” in my state and as others have stated, it’s not a hill worth dying on and I’m not about to start arguing with the teenager who’s standing at the door at Target about mask efficacy. The truth is we don’t know; “they” don’t know, but I found this video about masks lowering the viral load was interesting.
Deeply disappointed by the regulars here.
Do any of you wear a seatbelt?
Remember the seatbelt laws were passed in the 80’s. Many, many objected on the intrusion of government on personal choice. I know some still rebel. I have one good friend that let’s Bitchin’ Betty in his F-150 issue warnings he isn’t wearing his.
But most of America including my own father who hated seatbelts ‘gave in’. Either tired of the warnings, tickets or just plain statistics started buckling up.
Personally I hate wearing a helmet on a motorcycle. I feel like I am MORE likely to get INTO an accident since my FOV is diminished as are auditory inputs. But… if I do get into an accident – which I have – my noggin is a little bit more protected.
Some here talk of being rebellious and not wearing masks into stores. Which pits you against store employees. People who don’t have a choice. My wife has been front line since Day 1. My young daughters thereafter in retail and fast food. They are supposed to enforce company policy – any government rules. Idiots pick fights with them even in the drive thru. Guess where I stand on that. You want to fight my family of girls? Bring it on. You are projecting to the wrong people.
Stop your protesting with the General Public that are just trying to keep their job. Protest against the politicians if you are that adamant.
Vipes,
Yes. Some people should bear in mind that the person at the door to the grocery store doesn’t have a degree in infection control, but then, neither do they. Unless you are actually a qualified expert on the Constitution, and even if you are, they probably don’t need to hear a lecture on that either. Things seem fairly laid back in Texas but I understand that’s not universal. Wear the damn mask, it probably won’t kill you, and if it does, that’s not going to be your problem either any more.
What has been lost by a lot of “decision makers” (political hacks to the rest of us) is that masks and the rest were never presented as some sort of solution by anyone qualified to have an opinion, just something to slow the spread down. Now they are using the continued spread as an excuse to justify ever more obtrusive mandates. In a way, they are being punished for the sin of hubris in claiming to be able to control that which was never under human control in the first place.
Boris Johnson seems hell bent on driving the British economy back to the Norman Conquest pursuing the very long shot that they can put the genie back in the bottle.
We may all live to eat a million dollar loaf of bread.
CDC numbers on survival rate for the infected indicate little difference from the average survival rate for a year for the same age person. Until we get to 75 or older.
We are being played.
Look at the chart- death rate of covid infected patients per age group, as compared to pre covid all cause death rate per age group per year.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/jNtvqQd7I5si/
1–the Coronavius death rate should be *added* to the standard non-survival rates, right?…so for a 60 year old male, the Covid-19 risk should be added to the 1.2% existing risk, and for a 60 y/o female, added to the .7% existing risk.
2–of course, not everyone gets infected, so Infection Fatality Rates cannot be applied to the entire population to calculate relative risks.
3–an analysis at Bloomberg showed age-stratified relative risks based on various assumptions about *total* number of deaths. For 200,000 total, the deaths per 100,000 in the 50-64 age range can be calculated at .0006, or .06%. This would be consistent with the Infection Fatality Ratio data IF the proportion of the population infected (in that age range) winds up at 12%.
4–for comparison, the Covid death risk is about 4X the risk from auto and other transportation accidents, in that age range. If someone spends a year working as a roofer, they will have a risk of about 51 per 100K. So Covid in that age range appears to be about as risky as roofing work.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-07/comparing-coronavirus-deaths-by-age-with-flu-driving-fatalities
And that’s how you lose your freedom, a TSA search by an useless mask at a time.
Conformity, your name is American.
Don’t stick out, or I will fight you on personal grounds, because my family works as cashiers and store-greeters. It’s not a hill worth dying. Grumble-grumble, but it is mandated by my state, so I will comply.
Interesting enough, I never had lip from store employees for not wearing mask inside. Once, when I was already in the line to the register (at marked 6′ distance), a manager quietly approached me, and I said let me pay for this big cart of you your product and I’ll leave – and she agreed and I did.
I will wear it now, since money speak. But my personal bucket of tolerance is getting filled pretty quickly and who knows what might happen to be the last drop.
Mandatory masks probably aren’t even in the top 10 of useless government initiatives. Not in a world of mandatory recycling. Or mandatary diversity set asides for government contractors.
And does anybody fight those anymore? Any of those top 10 and a zillion others? There was so much indignation with TSA when it was thrown at us first – but time passed now everyone complies, not a pip.
“Nothing is more permanent than “temporary measures”. Little bite by little bite, and nothing remains from an island of freedom.
Does it worry anybody that lefties gleefully call the current state of affairs “the new normal”?
You forgot something..